It’s only been a full day since 5.3 dropped, but wow, what a great patch. I have never felt so unpressured by the valor points grind, thanks to heroic scenarios. Like 15 minutes for 120-150 VP once per day, which is amazing. Despite an urgent need to cap every week (at least, until my gear is full upgraded) I have no concerns about how long it’ll take me to get that done.
The scenarios themselves are pretty bite-sized content, but I appreciate the step up in difficulty that the heroic flavor offers. Hopefully them not being a complete steamroll just yet will keep them interesting and not at all tedious. You also cannot beat that return on (time) investment.
In the three that I’ve run so far, all of them have included someone being a tank, which seemed to be a huge help. A healer was definitely not mandatory, but having one person taking and mitigating the damage from some damaging trash pulls was well worth it. The bonus timers also seemed pretty easy to hit (granted, that was in Throne gear).
I didn’t do much in the Battlefield: Barrens world event, but I liked what I saw.
I’m also a little annoyed (okay, jealous) because the Horde storyline right now is so good and the Alliance angle on it just cannot compare, no matter how awesome and allied and cooperative we are and how we’re planning out some sort of sneak attack with the Trolls as cover. That’s all well and good, but it’s so boring compared to a rebellion. Strife is sexy and exciting; reconnaissance is dreadfully meh.
Still, it was really nice to be back in the Barrens. I have good memories of that zone, especially after I learned how to exit general chat.
The whole event should be a nice diversion now that I’m pretty burnt out from caring about the Isle of Thunder. So, excellent pacing on the content additions there, Blizz.
Zoom, zoom
In my post the other day I talked about how critical it was for us to keep up our speedy pace and get all the farm down in one night, so we are poised for only progression on our second night. Well, thankfully, I did not jinx us! We had an awesome pace last night and stormed right through the first half of Throne of Thunder in two hours, chain pulling our way to Jin-Kun’s fresh corpse only a few minutes before raid officially ended.
Durumu won’t know what hit him on Monday!
I also picked up some great loot last night, among them an expertise-itemized Bracers of Constant Implosion, Zerat, and Ji-Kun’s Rising Winds (thanks to Voss). The tank upgrades just by themselves freed up enough expertise that I was able to push to 26% haste. It’s not an amazing amount, but I’m really happy that I’m finally starting to stack up that wonderful stat. If I could get a Worldbreaker’s Stormscythe to drop, I think I could do some serious damage.
Between the weekly Barrens quest and Heroic scenarios, I capped my VP in 4 hours in a single evening on one character. I really, really like the Heroic Scenarios. 3 people is just enough to grab a couple of (decent) guildies, and then go have fun, whereas 5 mans often you’d have to PUG one or two people.
The difficulty is welcomed, but three DPS with one strong off-heals is sufficient as well. I run my Enhancement Shaman with a couple other DPS and we rocked the crap out of the couple of runs. The DPS requirements to hit some of those timers isn’t too bad, too. High enough that if you’ve got someone still pulling only 30k DPS, you’re (likely) screwed, but not so high that you need ToT gear to make it. I think an average of ~60k DPS for three players is sufficient to hit most of the timed events.
But I love getting rewarded for hitting those timers. It’s like, you’re awesome, here’s more VP! I really hope Blizzard keeps the idea of variable rewards moving forward. Those folks who don’t make the timers or bonus goals still get something, but if you rock, you get more something. It’s a great way to encourage better play, I think.
I’d be willing to bet money we’ll see that timed bonus mechanic added to raids down the road.
It’s technically not the first time they’ve done it. Remember the Rare Cache on Hodir in Ulduar if you killed him fast enough? Or of course the Bear Runs. But I think this is the first time they’ve been really presented to you in your face as part of the UI and it’s obvious there’s a bonus.
Good point, I was thinking more a copy-paste of the heroic scenario bonus mechanic.